Hi,

From reading here it seems that the only networking support on the 360 is Live under XNA. Do any of the professional developer options give you more control over networking?

What i am trying to do is connect an XBOX to a haptics interface (a small robot used for simulating touch in games), and as there seems to be no support for adding usb devices to an xbox the second choice for interfacing would be udp over the network connection.

Im aware that theres a clause in the XNA EULA prohibiting such things for commercial apps, but at this stage everything im doing is going to be prototyping (non-commercial), in the hopes of securing some funding for a commercial development (where i could afford to look into the commercial dev channels).

Nope. Not even native developers get anything more than the LIVE interface. There is no way, even in C++ with an XDK to connect to a non-LIVE location.

We've had similar threads in here before. The best advice is to build and test your device on a PC where USB drivers are fully and freely supported. Then if you really think there is a chance to go commercial with the 360 use that as your prototype to approach Microsoft. Bear in mind that the 360 is sold, marketed and developed as a gaming device so trying to take it in other directions may well be something Microsoft is not interested in (and you need Microsoft to do any stuff like this).

SimReality: Thanks for the info, you have saved me a fair bit of wasted effort.

TheZManiac: Actually i already have windows prototypes working for the software, and im designing the embedded hardware at the moment. Whilst what we are doing is game development, its very specialised, and i doubt its ever going to be a big cash cow for MS. For the cost difference i think I'll just spec PCs to ship with the hardware over Xbox 360s. The only benefit for us of using consoles would be they are easy to replace / maintain compared to PCs. Thanks for the insight though.

Nothing stopping you of course connecting the device to the PC, have the PC and 360 join a system link session, and send the data over the network to the 360... This should work over Live too, assuming both PC and 360 have a gamertag signed in that has both Creators Club and Live Gold.

If this is true, then how does Final Fantasy XI work on the 360?  Does the underlying LIVE component have a well-known-server mode that just isn't exposed in XNA GS?

Square Enix likely paid Microsoft to install a server in the LIVE server farm. I believe that's how MMOs like that work. I know someone (Shawn or another MS guy) mentioned it at one point. But basically Microsoft has to put up the server for you.

Xbox Live Server Platform API - not somethine you get access to unless you are a licensed developer and have lots of $$$$$

All of the announcements of the Live Server Platform are after the FFXI ship date for the 360, and it seems doubtful that the 360 version of FFXI has a completely different networking stack in any case.

> There is no way, even in C++ with an XDK to connect to a non-LIVE location.

I was just trying to make the point that this has to be completely false, as FFXI servers are not platform specific. Ie, PC users, PS2 users and 360 users all play in the same worlds on the same servers, which are all operated by Square Enix in Japan.

SpaceMonkeyMax:

All of the announcements of the Live Server Platform are after the FFXI ship date for the 360, and it seems doubtful that the 360 version of FFXI has a completely different networking stack in any case.

> There is no way, even in C++ with an XDK to connect to a non-LIVE location.

I was just trying to make the point that this has to be completely false, as FFXI servers are not platform specific. Ie, PC users, PS2 users and 360 users all play in the same worlds on the same servers, which are all operated by Square Enix in Japan.

Well then Square Enix must have some very special agreement with Microsoft because native developers don't get raw sockets; just the LIVE networking. Perhaps Microsoft gave them what is now Live Server Platform or perhaps Microsoft wrote some interop for the LIVE servers or something. But native devolopers with an XDK only get LIVE. This has been stated by MS employees on this board before. So whatever the arrangement it certainly cost Square Enix a lot of money and isn't something your average developer gets to do.

SpaceMonkeyMax:

All  seems doubtful that the 360 version of FFXI has a completely different networking stack in any case.

Why - all the different platforms had to have different rendering - its not unheard of for other parts of a game to change per platform. Bottom line unless you are an SE employee or can produce some links you are jsut making assumptions.

I was just trying to make the point that this has to be completely false, as FFXI servers are not platform specific. Ie, PC users, PS2 users and 360 users all play in the same worlds on the same servers, which are all operated by Square Enix in Japan.

Well I'm sure it was a big deal for MS to get FF on the 360 so they worked out a deal it certainly doesn't imply that 'Xbox 360 games get access to raw sockets' though that could be one solution...

All we know here is what the MS folk have told us (and anybody with a XDK cannot comment as they are all under NDA) and that is what we have told you.